Commission. Given KSU's location in the state capital, it has ready access to multiple partners for collaboration.
In an effort to institutionalize environmental education at KSU, the Center provided sixteen mini-grants to KSU faculty to enhance their existing courses and to create new courses with environmental topics. Faculty responded from a wide range of disciplines: Biology, Aquaculture, Computer Science, Literature (including a new course in nature writing), Geography, Sociology, Psychology, Speech, Journalism, the Visual Arts, and the Whitney Young School of Honors and Liberal Studies. Some of these enhanced courses are part of the General Education Core that pre-service KSU teacher candidates must take. Faculty from these disciplines will also be available to contribute to the MES program.
Another resource that KSU will bring to the proposed MES program and overall environmental education initiatives at the University is its newly acquired Henry County site for outdoor environmental learning. Located 15 miles north of Frankfort, the site, known as the Environmental Education Center (ECC), covers more than 300 acres of diverse natural habitats. This site is a location where K-16 teachers can bring their students to investigate environmental issues. While they are there, teachers will learn how to develop outdoor classrooms and use outdoor learning areas on their school grounds and in their neighborhoods. It is anticipated that schools in Franklin, Henry, and Owen County, and other surrounding counties in the KSU service area, will involve students in field trips and overnight camping activities at the EEC. Activities will include designing and maintaining an outdoor site, integrating environmental education across the curriculum, and integrating classroom learning with outdoor experiences. The KSU EEC is managed by the Land Grant Program ( www.ksuenvironmental.org). In an effort to extend experiences related to the site, the program has acquired a mobile classroom that can bring resource people and environmental exhibits to service-area schools.
The interdisciplinary nature of the program will allow students with diverse undergraduate backgrounds to enroll in the MES program. All applicants (part-time and full-time) must meet the minimum standards for admission to graduate study at KSU.
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